


please feel free (to send a signal)

by chansleftchiddy



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Car Accidents, Crying, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Sharing a Bed, Trauma, jongin is a uni student but it's not really discussed, kyungsoo is a paramedic, somewhat graphic descriptions of injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:41:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23424925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chansleftchiddy/pseuds/chansleftchiddy
Summary: ‘Calling for all available units, we have a category one incident involving four cars and one truck. Five presumed dead and several injured. All available units please report. Estimated eight needed.’ A voice crackled over the tinny speakers in the cab.Baekhyun made eye contact with Kyungsoo from the passenger seat. ‘Call it?’Kyungsoo nodded and pulled the engine into gear. ‘Call it.’-Where Kyungsoo is a paramedic and he attends his worst call to date.Luckily he's got Jongin waiting at home to support him.
Relationships: Do Kyungsoo | D.O/Kim Jongin | Kai
Comments: 2
Kudos: 39





	please feel free (to send a signal)

**Author's Note:**

> title from "love us again" by joji
> 
> also i wrote this as a platonic relationship but it can definitely be romantic if that's what you want!!!!!

Kyungsoo’s hair stood on end when he pulled the van up to the scene.

_ ‘Calling for all available units, we have a category one incident involving four cars and one truck. Five presumed dead and several injured. All available units please report. Estimated eight needed.’ A voice crackled over the tinny speakers in the cab. _

_ Baekhyun made eye contact with Kyungsoo from the passenger seat. ‘Call it?’ _

_ Kyungsoo nodded and pulled the engine into gear. ‘Call it.’ _

_ Baekhyun’s finger clicks over the button of the radio transmitter. ‘47 reporting. Where should we be headed?’ _

He knew what he was walking into but the sight still shook him to the core. Cars that had been directly hit by the lorry were barely discernable - crunched into misshapen hunks of metal. Those that hadn’t suffered the same fate had their paint layers smeared across the sidewalls of the underpass. A conglomeration of glass and blood swirled in between stray bits of debris that covered the area.

Four other ambulance teams had arrived before him and Baekhyun and they had immediately gotten to blocking off the roads to divert drivers and to removing whoever they safely could from the vehicles. 

Four filled bodybags sat to the side of the scene, undisturbed and out of the way. Their green color contrasting against the slate grey and cement shades that seemed to only get darker under the cover of night and the city lights. Paramedics rushed around from patient to patient while a firefighter crew prised open a car with the Jaws of Life. 

The medical director arrived on scene to distribute jobs to any lost or distressed workers as Kyungsoo knelt beside a young woman. He held the bag valve mask tightly to her face with one hand and squeezed it with the other, encouraging her to develop a regular breathing pattern as she lay on the scoop stretcher. The contrast between her too-pale face and the bright yellow of the hard plastic beneath her was sickening.

His hands shook as he was shouldered away from her when Taehyung and Jihyo lifted her into the back of their ambulance, planning a route to the nearest hospital with an open ICU bed. 

Kyungsoo bounced from victim to victim, some in a worse state than others. He wiped dripping blood from the eyes of a little boy and consoled a widowed mother at the end of the night. He and Baekhyun strapped themselves into their respective seats of the ambulance after patching up some minor scrapes on a pair of freshmen that were safe to go home. After their broadcast of departure was sent back to dispatch they drove in silence.

Twenty minutes later, the teams had gathered in a meeting room for a case debriefing. The medical director had stood up the front and recited off a long list of mental health resources for them to consult if need be as well as distributed a small stack of incident report sheets.

After the meeting had concluded, Kyungsoo leaned against the side of the concrete building, he watched cars move in and out of the shadows caused by the streetlights from his spot in the dim parking lot. The rhythmic trill of his phone’s dial tone rung in his right ear, distracting him from the bite of the winter air that lingered in the early hours after midnight.

The phone line popped and cracked.

‘Ky'ngsoo? It’s two-am, is everything okay?’ Jongin’s voice was deep with sleep and trickled through Kyungsoo’s bones like rainwater in a rooftop overflow pipe.

It was like the weight of the last hour and a half had come crashing down on him. All the emotions that he had dutifully suppressed had resurfaced in the worst way and he didn’t know how to handle them any longer. He sniffled quietly and felt his chest heave. 

There was the shuffling of bedsheets on the other end of the line. ‘Hyung?’

‘I’m sorry - I didn’t mean to wake you.’ His voice cracked and was clouded with tears. He swallowed down the lump in his throat to the best of his ability.

‘It’s fine. I was up anyway.’  _ No, you weren’t. _

‘Okay, maybe I wasn’t but it doesn’t matter. What’s going on? You’re crying.’

‘It’s been a bad night. Th- the last call was horrible. By the time we arrived so many had died an- and there was so much blood and you know that I’m always fine with the blood but this was so  _ so  _ different and there was this little boy.’ He took a shaky breath and it rattled in his chest like a tambourine. ‘Jongin-ah, I wanted to hear your voice and…’

A pause. ‘And?’

Kyungsoo choked out a sharp sob that felt like knives in his esophagus. ‘I wanted to know that you were okay.’

‘I’m okay, hyung. I’m in bed. I’m fine. I promise.’

  
  
  


_ ‘47, how are you holding up?’ _

Baekhyun and Kyungsoo looked at each other, no mirth left in their eyes. They sent back echoing  _ not very well _ ’s.

_ ‘I’m sorry, you two. I would give you a break if I could but we just got a call of a seizure in an apartment on your side of the city. Fourteen-year-old female in a third-floor apartment with her mother. She’s hit her head. There’s no cranial bleeding but she did vomit.’ _

‘On our way.’

_ ‘47, we have an elderly man who has fallen off his couch. His wife can’t help him up. Confirm?’ _

‘Confirm. What’s the address?’

  
  
  


Jongin was alerted to Kyungsoo’s arrival by the jangling of metal and the scraping sound of keys missing the keyhole on the lock for their front door.

He jumped off of the couch and made his way to the door, swinging into the kitchen to put the electric kettle on as he went past. He took one look at the elder, his backpack slung over one shoulder and the hood of his jacket covering his head, his tired brown eyes looked up and connected with Jongin’s wide ones. Kyungsoo dropped his bag and kicked the door closed behind him with his heel when he moved towards him with his arms out and head tilted.

The paramedic crashed into Jongin’s embrace and dropped his head onto his shoulder. The kettle clicked in the quiet of the room, signaling that the water had finished boiling.

‘Welcome home, hyung-ah.’ Jongin murmured as he pressed his face into Kyungsoo’s crown.

He settled the older man on the couch after helping him remove his jacket and shoes, watching as he tucked his legs in tightly and wrapped himself up in the soft grey blanket they had bought when they first moved in. 

Jongin swiftly passed through the kitchen to fill up the ready-made mug of instant hot chocolate powder, giving it a quick stir before presenting it to his roommate in the other room. 

Kyungsoo looks up at him. ‘I’m sorry for keeping you up.’

‘Don’t worry about that now. Let me run you a bath. I’ll wash your hair.’

Kyungsoo nodded quietly and went back to the hot chocolate in his hand.

  
  
  


Jongin massaged the shampoo into Kyungsoo’s hair, his head lolling forward lightly at the pressure. The sweet aroma of cherry blossoms wafted around the water that had been tinted pink from the bath bomb that had fizzed away in it. In their three years of living together, he had never seen Kyungsoo so distraught over a call before. He had been a qualified paramedic for a little longer than a year. He had seen the older come back from shifts with blood crusted into his hair or staining his hands. He had even seen the other jump out from an ambulance no more than twenty meters from him and enter a house while Jongin was on a neighborhood walk. He’d received the occasional phone call or text from Kyungsoo after a particularly amusing call or stressful event but he had never called while he was on a nightshift. Let alone cried, too.

‘It was horrible. I know I’ve already said that tonight but it’s true. There were helicopters flying above us. Most likely the news channels.’ He turned his face to the left to cast his gaze over his shoulder. ‘It’ll probably be on channel ten in that case.’ He directed his attention back to the skin on his knees. Jongin hummed. He didn’t really know what to say.

‘I’m sorry you had to be there.’

‘Someone has to.’

They fall back into silence and the only sound that fills the room is the breaking of water as Jongin rids Kyungsoo’s hair or shampoo tenderly.

‘The aftermath is the hardest part. We go to a meeting and are given resources that are understaffed and overrun, then we get sent back out to deal with more calls when the director decides that he’s gotten tired of saying the same things over and over again.’

‘Mmm. That sucks.’ Jongin ran his conditioner-slick fingers through the short strands.

‘It does but its worse for the next few patients. They have to see us with our red eyes and shaky dispositions. We try our hardest to keep it down because they don’t need to know about the last job. We’re there for them and to tell them that they’ll be fine. We can’t let them know where we came from or what we’ve seen.’

‘You can’t break the facade.’

‘We can’t break the facade.’

Once Kyungsoo had been thoroughly cleaned, he was wrapped up in towels to dry while Jongin rifled through his wardrobe drawers to find some pajamas for him.

After a few minutes of weak protesting from the older, Jongin pulled the two of them into his too-small twin bed and gripped the blankets so that they bunched up around their heads. The alarm clock on the bedside table shone the red numbers “ _ 4:11am _ ”.

‘Go to sleep, hyung-ah.’

‘Thank you, Jonginie.’

Jongin shuffled a minuscule amount closer when a solid arm slipped around the curve of his waist.


End file.
